Sauron

Yes, it does. An inerrant text cannot have a mistake in it.

I refer you to the subset "bible believer". The viewpoint insists on a literal reading unless there is clearly figurative language being used. That is not the case with the claim of Hebrews in Egypt.

These are the facts. I even provided an example to keep people on track and avoid the creation of strawmen positions. Yet you managed to do so anyhow. I guess you want a round of congratulations.

Uh, yes. There is.

No, I'm just better educated on what the term "bible believer" means than you are.

Sauron

Faith is not required for a naturalistic worldview.
But it is required for a christian worldview.

Sauron

Laying it on a little thick, aren't you?

I don't think anyone would accuse Peter of blocking or excluding people who want to participate in research or investigation - assuming that is what they really want to do, and not push an agenda.

And your tactic above - mentioning obviously outlandish or offensive ideas in proximity to Peter Kirby's name, hoping that some of the dirt will stick in people's minds - that's rather slimy.

judge

How, does a person who has a real experience of Christ in honesty consider for example that Christ did not even exist.
It would be perfectly honest for that person to consider things in the light of the facts of his or her own experience.

Now , obviously there is a lot on nonsense that is going to come along but where does one draw the line? How does one exclude and censor everyone?

Riverwind

If you analyze your own beliefs, you will find out that this is not so. Everything you know, you merely believe and have faith in.

Read a bit of existentialist philosophy and, if you understand it, see if you still don't think that all anyone has in life is pure faith.

Faith is an essential component of us all.

Sauron

The same way that someone who believes they had a UFO experience allows themselves to entertain the idea that they might be mistaken? They don't have to accept that idea right off the bat, but they have to be willing to let the course of inquiry go down that road.

Personal experience is subjective and non-repeatable. You can't do history or science with it.

By using objective evidence as the standard that applies to everyone.

Sauron

Wrong. I don't have faith in the natural worldview, and I'll tell you why: none is needed. The natural worldview is about evidence, not faith.

I realize that this is about the point in the discussion where the christians try to create a semantic equation between two usages of the word "faith". The term is used to describe both:

(a) a belief rooted in a religious document and not based in objective evidence -- and in many cases, contrary to it;

as well as

(b) a reasoned assumption that has been shown to be objectively true and can be tested at any time

However, (b) is not faith. This trick is similar to watching creationists trying to reject evolution by saying "it's only a theory". The attempt to create wiggle room by semantic switcheroo is not viable.

I still don't agree.

No. There is just a bit of deliberate blurriness in the definition of faith. This blurriness is intellectually dishonest, and is committed to serve the interests of religionists, who want their "faith" (belief without evidence) to have the same intellectual standing as reasoned assumption.

Riverwind

Let me take the discussion a bit away from the path it's currently taking...

Does faith play a role in mathematics? Why / why not?

How does this differ from history and linguistics (a couple of important "sciences" related to the Bible)?

My own answers:

Mathematics seems more concrete and testable. We can discover "true" answers. (I feel that even this can be questioned however...don't we merely put interpretations on our human mathematical discoveries? We know our "equations" work, but do we really know why? Will we ever really know why?)

With respect to history and linguistics, they seem to have much less definite answers. We can only discover data that is ravaged by time. Is our data complete? Do we have enough data to make "true" historical and linguistic reconstructions? In other words, isn't it merely the interpretation that we put on the data? Whose interpretations are correct? Are any of us correct? We can follow "methodologies" in an attempt to interpret our data, but if those methodologies are flawed then we'll simply get flawed interpretations.

Case in point...Kathleen Kenyon's archaeological excavations at Jericho did not find walls that dated to the same time period as mentioned in the Bible. This is hard data...fact. Everything else is interpretation. Is our dating for the Biblical chronology of this time period correct? Could the walls truly have been knocked down and not left in place for Kenyon to discover? How can we know? It seems to me that if someone uses this data to contradict the Biblical accounts, then that is simply their interpretation of the data based on their own faith in current Biblical chronology and perhaps the belief that the stories were made up for theological purposes anyway (so of course there would be no walls during this time period).

Is there really any solution to this dilemma?

Riverwind

Yes. Everyone has faith. You have faith that "evidence" is "evidence". Again, before saying "No" or "I disagree" as you do to every single person and argument you deal with, take a little introspective time to read existentialist philosophy.

All I have to say to this is "Awwww....shyuuuuut up!" This is not "apologetics" or dishonest word play. Don't fight shadows.

Solitary Man

Oh, nice shift of the burden. "You killed this man!" "No I didn't!" "Prove you didn't!"

Same shit. In that regard, you've pulled a classic "praxeus". Nice move, fundy.

Oh, ok. I finally get it now. You build a strawman, and you knock it down, and everything else is a red herring to your strawman. Yeah, whatever.

O RLY? Degrees, please?